BARBADOS – What makes Barbados’ Food and Rum Festival unique?
Tonight, our Denielle Miller speaks with one of the participating chefs, who has cooked for royalty, in order to find out.
Held on Pile Bay, the event was hosted by Chef Debra Sardinha of Trinidad and Tobago.
Set on sandy shores, with the ocean behind her, Chef Debra – also known as Chef Debbie – demonstrates how to prepare twin island fish cakes with cucumber, pineapple, and avocado oil.
My personal taste test scoring it as delicious.
But what was more impressive was Chef Debbie’s resume.
With decades of experience in the culinary industry, most notably she was the first female executive chef across Hilton Hotels Americas, she’s even cooked for the late her majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Her influence is felt both regionally and globally.
Despite her personal accomplishments, however, her goal is to see Caribbean flavors represented a lot more,
She believes it begins with events like Barbados’ Food and Rum Festival.
Highlighting the fact that the celebration not only showcases local chefs but also culinary artisans from throughout the region.
Like the street parade at Oistins under the stars on Thursday night.
The event’s location highlights another distinctive feature of the festival: it is not confined to a single area of the island.
In fact, Chef Debbie’s cooking demonstration was one of several taking place on Friday morning.
But the fun was only just getting started on this adventure.
The sold-out event featured a classic Bajan bus excursion fueled by rum.
Designed as a bar crawl, it included a visit to Mount Gay Distilleries LTD and several local bars.
Now I was not the first from my group to bow out of the rum-fueled fun, but I was not the last man standing either.
The trick is to pace yourself, because before dawn broke on Saturday, we were back on the road for the Rise and Rum party.
